Astronomy

Comet ISON was bathed with solar radiation in December, which caused the ice on the comet to turn into gas. Because of the close proximity to the sun, the nucleus of the comet was expected to spew a lot of gas and releas rocks and dust with it. The sunlight would then reflect against these particles giving the particles a yellowish color. The comet is about 3 miles in diameter. The material that was released because of the radiation forms a spherical halo, known as a coma. This would create a really long tale. There are many different predictions as to how bright the comet will be. It was predicted that on December 1, comet ISON would be as bright as Mars and by late December it would be visible for observers as long as the sky is dark.

            According to a CNN article, as of right now, the fate of comet ISON is unknown. Most scientists believe that 90% of ISON was destroyed because of the close proximity to the Sun. The Hubble Telescope will determine what remains of ISON. Even though it wasn’t the comet that scientists were expecting, it did provide lots of information. As of right now, it is called a comet remnant.

Source:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/05/tech/comet-ison-dead-or-alive/

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Comet_ISON_%28C-2012_S1%29_by_TRAPPIST_on_2013-11-15.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Comet_ISON_Oct_08_2013.jpg

Astronomy December 2013

On November 29, 2012, the Huffington Post reports that NASA’s Messenger probe has discovered water ice at the poles of Mercury. These areas of water ice are at impact craters where the ice never sees the sun. These craters are in shadow regions. Messenger used a neuron spectroscopy that measures the levels of Hydrogen concentration in order to find out if there was any water present. Messenger was launched in 2004; it made three flybys of Mercury between 2008 and 2009 until it entered into Mercury’s orbit in 2011.

In the article Torrid Mercury’s icy poles from Astronomy, it says that scientist for decades have believed that their might be water ice in the corners of the innermost planets of our sola system. “During the past several decades, scientists have come to realize that a conspiracy of freak accidents involving Mercury’s motion and orientation had created small regions on the planet’s surface where it ought to be cold enough for ice to form and survive for billions of years”. 40 years ago, however, NASA’s Mariner 10 was not able to make the same observations that Messenger was able to make. Radar observations on Earth detected “unusually reflective regions in Mercury’s polar regions”. Mercury is most likely tidally locked with the Sun and always has the same face that points towards the Sun.

Sources:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/29/water-on-mercury-nasa-announces-ice-poles_n_2212433.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/incoming/article8497114.ece/BINARY/original/Mercury.jpg

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Mercury_Goethe_craters_crop.jpg